This book addresses the complexity of talking about normativity in bioethics within the context of contemporary multicultural and multi-religious society. It offers original contributions by specialists in bioethics exploring new ways of understanding normativity in bioethics. In bioethical publications and debates, the concept of normativity is often used without consideration of the difficulties surrounding it, whereas there are many competing claims for normativity within bioethics. Examples of such competing normative bioethical discourses can be perceived in variations and differences in bioethical arguments within individual religions, and the opposition between bioethical arguments from specific religions and arguments from bioethicists who do not claim religious allegiance. We also cannot merely assume that a Western understanding of normative bioethics will be unproblematic in bioethics in non-Western cultures and religions. Through an analysis of normativity in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish bioethics, the book creates awareness of the complexity of normativity in bioethics. The book also covers normative bioethics outside an explicitly religiously committed context, and specific attention is paid to bioethics as an interdisciplinary endeavor. It reveals how normativity relates to empirical and global bioethics, which challenges it faces in bioethics in secular pluralistic society, and how to overcome these. By doing that, this book fills an important gap in bioethics literature.

The Handbook of Bioethical Decisions Volume II addresses and analyzes the most important ethical concerns and moral quandaries related to scientific integrity and institutional ethics. It counts on two parts, Part One: Research Ethics, which addresses issues related to Scientific Integrity, Research Misconduct and Conducting Ethical Research, and Part Two: Institutional Ethics and Bioethics Committees, which explores Institutional Ethics issues, Ethics and Bioethics Committees’ roles and scopes, and Bioethical Issues in Institutional Ethics. Consequently, the Handbook, Vol. II, offers a remarkable collection of works by outstanding international experts on institutional and research ethics, in order for bioethics practitioners to obtain better elements to address key issues related to integrity in research as well as to decision-making processes. In this fashion, this volume is a valuable resource for professionals working on different bioethical and biomedical fields, such as, ethics and bioethics committees, health care institutions, biomedical and pharmacological companies, and academic settings, among others. Chapter 26 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Leading bioethicists from America, Asia and Europe discuss Jahr's visionary concept of an ethics of 'bios', integrating the ethics of land, community, health, and culture in light of global challenges in the 21st century.

This book covers the results of a study concerning systems for healthcare-oriented monitoring of elderly persons. It is focused on the methods for processing data from impulse-radar sensors and depth sensors, aimed at localisation of monitored persons and estimation of selected quantities informative from the healthcare point of view. It includes mathematical descriptions of the considered methods, as well as the corresponding algorithms and the results of their testing in a real-world context. Moreover, it explains the motivations for developing healthcare-oriented monitoring systems and specifies the real-world needs which may be addressed by such systems. The healthcare systems, all over the world, are confronted with challenges implied by the ageing of population and the lack of adequate recruitment of healthcare professionals. Those challenges can be met by developing new technologies aimed at improving the quality of life of elderly people and at increasing the efficiency of public health management. Monitoring systems may contribute to this strategy by providing information on the evolving health status of independently-living elderly persons, enabling healthcare personnel to quickly react to dangerous events. Although these facts are generally acknowledged, such systems are not yet being commonly used in healthcare facilities and households. This may be explained by the difficulties related to the development of technological solutions which can be both acceptable for monitored persons and capable of providing healthcare personnel with useful information. The impulse-radar sensors and depth sensors, considered in this book, have a potential for overcoming those difficulties since they are not cumbersome for the monitored persons – if compared to wearable sensors – and do not violate the monitored person's privacy – if compared to video cameras. Since for safety reasons the level of power, emitted by the radar sensors, must be ultra-low, the task of detection and processing of signals is a research challenge which requires more sophisticated methods than those developed for other radar applications. This book contains descriptions of new Bayesian methods, applicable for the localisation of persons by means of impulse-radar sensors, and an exhaustive review of previously published ones. Furthermore, the methods for denoising, regularised numerical differentiation and fusion of data from impulse-radar sensors and depth sensors are systematically reviewed in this book. On top of that, the results of experiments aimed at comparing the performance of various data-processing methods, which may serve as guidelines for related future projects, are presented.

The panorama of bioethical problems is different today. Patients travel to Thailand for fast surgery; commercial surrogate mothers in India deliver babies to parents in rich countries; organs, body parts and tissues are trafficked from East to Western Europe; physicians and nurses migrating from Africa to the U.S; thousands of children or patients with malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS are dying each day because they cannot afford effective drugs that are too expensive. Mainstream bioethics as it has developed during the last 50 years in Western countries is evolving into a broader approach that is relevant for people across the world and is focused on new global problems. This book provides an introduction into the new field of global bioethics. Addressing these problems requires a broader vision of bioethics that not only goes beyond the current emphasis on individual autonomy, but that criticizes the social, economic and political context that is producing the problems at global level. This book argues that global bioethics is a necessity because the social, economic and environmental effects of globalization require critical responses. Global bioethics is not a finished product that can simply be applied to solve global problems, but it is the ongoing result of interaction and exchange between local practices and global discourse. It combines recognition of differences and respect for cultural diversity with convergence towards common perspectives and shared values. The book examines the nature of global problems as well as the type of responses that are needed, in order to exemplify the substance of global bioethics. It discusses the ethical frameworks that are available for global discourse and shows how these are transformed into global governance mechanisms and practices.

This Dictionary presents a broad range of topics relevant in present-day global bioethics. With more than 500 entries, this dictionary covers organizations working in the field of global bioethics, international documents concerning bioethics, personalities that have played a role in the development of global bioethics, as well as specific topics in the field.The book is not only useful for students and professionals in global health activities, but can also serve as a basic tool that explains relevant ethical notions and terms. The dictionary furthers the ideals of cosmopolitanism: solidarity, equality, respect for difference and concern with what human beings- and specifically patients - have in common, regardless of their backgrounds, hometowns, religions, gender, etc. Global problems such as pandemic diseases, disasters, lack of care and medication, homelessness and displacement call for global responses.This book demonstrates that a moral vision of global health is necessary and it helps to quickly understand the basic ideas of global bioethics.

The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee is an international body that sets standards in the field of bioethics. This collection represents the contributions of the IBC to global bioethics. The IBC is a body of 36 independent experts that follows progress in the life sciences and its applications in order to ensure respect for human dignity and freedom. Currently, some of the topics of the IBC contributions have been discussed in the bioethics literature, mostly journal articles. However, this is a unique contribution by the scholars who developed these universal declarations and reports. The contributors have not only provided a scholarly up to date discussion of their research topics, but as members of the IBC they have also discussed specific practical challenges in the development of such international documents. This book will be suited to academics within bioethics, health care policy and international law.

This book presents and elaborates on how the teaching of global ethics in healthcare contributes to furthering ideals of cosmopolitanism: solidarity, equality, respect for differences and concern with what human beings, and specifically patients have in common, regardless of where they live and who they are. Global problems such as pandemic diseases, disasters, lack of care and medication, homelessness and displacement call for global responses. The new area of global bioethics is providing answers by arguing that ethical discourse should first of all criticize the structures of violence and injustice that underlie many threats to global health. Education of health professionals should articulate that they are ‘citizens of the world’, like their patients. This book first demonstrates that a moral vision of global education is necessary to gain a global dimension. It is argued that a global framework of ethical principles is available; the challenge is to elaborate and specify that framework into specific educational approaches and models. The book subsequently analyzes goals and challenges of global education in biomedicine and healthcare. It is shown how such challenges (e.g. inequities and cultural differences) can be overcome. Finally, the book presents concrete examples (cases, methods, and practices) of global education in bioethics. The unique feature of the book is that it addresses global education challenges specifically in the area of healthcare, medicine, and medical science. It combines two areas of research and experience that are usually not connected: global bioethics and global education. This book is written for all those involved in global ethics teaching in medicine, nursing, ethics, philosophy, law, and theology courses.

Despite the massive scale of global inequalities, until recently few political philosophers or bioethicists addressed their ethical implications. Questions of justice were thought to be primarily internal to the nation state. Over the last decade or so, there has been an explosion of interest in the philosophical issues surrounding global justice. These issues are of direct relevance to bioethics. The links between poverty and health imply that we cannot separate questions of global health from questions about fair distribution of global resources and the institutions governing the world order. Similarly, as increasing numbers of medical trials are conducted in the developing world, researchers and their sponsors have to confront the special problems of doing research in an unjust world, with corresponding obligations to correct injustice and avoid exploitation. This book presents a collection of original essays by leading thinkers in political theory, philosophy, and bioethics. They address the key issues concerning global justice and bioethics from two perspectives. The first is ideal theory, which is concerned with the social institutions that would regulate a just world. What is the relationship between human rights and the provision of health care? How, if at all, should a global order distinguish between obligations to compatriots and others? The second perspective is from non-ideal theory, which governs how people should behave in the unjust world in which we actually find ourselves. What sort of medical care should actual researchers working in impoverished countries offer their subjects? What should NGOs do in the face of cultural practices with which they deem unethical? If coordinated international action will not happen, what ought individual states to do? These questions have more than theoretical interest; their answers are of direct practical import for policymakers, researchers, advocates, NGOs, scholars, and others. This book is the first collection to comprehensively address the intersection of global justice and bioethical dilemmas.